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Difference between revisions of "35: Balaji Srinivasan - The Heretic & The Virus"
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35: Balaji Srinivasan - The Heretic & The Virus (view source)
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=== Essay === | === Essay === | ||
Eric Weinstein: Hi, it’s Eric with some thoughts for this week’s audio essay on the topic of superposition. Now, to those of you in the know, superposition is an odd word in that it is the scientific concept we reach for when trying to describe the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat and the theory and philosophy of quantum measurement. We don’t yet know how to say that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time rigorously, so we fudge whatever is going on with this unfortunate feline and say that the cat and the quantum system on which its life depends are a mixture of two distinct states that are, somehow, co-mingled in a way that has defied a satisfying explanation for about a century. | <span style="font-weight:bold; color:#A6611A">Eric Weinstein</span>: Hi, it’s Eric with some thoughts for this week’s audio essay on the topic of superposition. Now, to those of you in the know, superposition is an odd word in that it is the scientific concept we reach for when trying to describe the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat and the theory and philosophy of quantum measurement. We don’t yet know how to say that the cat is both dead and alive at the same time rigorously, so we fudge whatever is going on with this unfortunate feline and say that the cat and the quantum system on which its life depends are a mixture of two distinct states that are, somehow, co-mingled in a way that has defied a satisfying explanation for about a century. | ||
Now, I’m usually loathe to appeal to such quantum concepts in everyday life, as there is a veritable industry of people making bad quantum analogies. For example, whenever you have a non-quantum system that is altered by its observation, that really has nothing to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees are almost certainly altered in their behavior due to her presence, but there is likely no competent quantum theorist who would analogize chimps to electrons and Goodall to an omniscient observable executing a quantum observation. Heisenberg adds nothing other than physics envy to the discussion of an entirely classical situation such as this. However, I have changed my mind in the case of superposition as I’d now like to explain. | Now, I’m usually loathe to appeal to such quantum concepts in everyday life, as there is a veritable industry of people making bad quantum analogies. For example, whenever you have a non-quantum system that is altered by its observation, that really has nothing to do with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees are almost certainly altered in their behavior due to her presence, but there is likely no competent quantum theorist who would analogize chimps to electrons and Goodall to an omniscient observable executing a quantum observation. Heisenberg adds nothing other than physics envy to the discussion of an entirely classical situation such as this. However, I have changed my mind in the case of superposition as I’d now like to explain. | ||
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I mean, do you really want open or closed borders? Do you really want to talk about psilocybin and heroin in the same breath? Do you really want to claim that there is no systemic oppression or that it governs every aspect of our lives? Before long, it is my hope that you will develop an intuition that many long-running stalemated discussions are really about having our lives shoehorned by others into inappropriate binaries that only represent the state of our world as a superposition of inappropriate and simplistic answers that you never would have chosen for yourself. | I mean, do you really want open or closed borders? Do you really want to talk about psilocybin and heroin in the same breath? Do you really want to claim that there is no systemic oppression or that it governs every aspect of our lives? Before long, it is my hope that you will develop an intuition that many long-running stalemated discussions are really about having our lives shoehorned by others into inappropriate binaries that only represent the state of our world as a superposition of inappropriate and simplistic answers that you never would have chosen for yourself. | ||
After a few brief words from our sponsors, I'll be back to introduce the guest for this episode's discussion. | |||
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